image of the Dark Man, she watched unblinking as he raised the instrument in his hands high, poising it over the tiny infant on the altar. The candlelight flickered, and tiny brilliant stars flashed from the tip of the instrument.
It began to arc downward.
It hovered for a moment, just over the child’s breast.
There was a short scream from the infant as the tip of the blade entered its chest, a scream that was cut off almost as quickly as it began.
The glinting metal sank deep into the child’s body.
Involuntarily, a shriek rose in Amelie’s throat, a small howl of pure horror that she cut off almost as quickly as the Dark Man had cut off the infant’s scream.
The Dark Man looked up, gazing out over the fire and the water, and Amelie imagined that his unseeable eyes were boring into her, fixing her image on his mind.
My baby, she thought. He wants my baby, too.
Silently she dipped her paddle into the water and backed the canoe away. But even as she moved noiselessly through the black shadows, she could still feel the eyes of the Dark Man following her, reaching out to her, grasping at her.
No.
Not at her.
At the baby within her.
As she turned the canoe, intent on fleeing into the darkness, she heard the Dark Man speak once again.
“George Coulton,” the heavy voice uttered. “When will you bring me what is mine?”
There was a moment of silence before Amelie heard her husband reply. When at last he spoke, George’s flat, expressionless voice was clear.
“The night he’s born. The night he’s born, I be bringin’ him to you.”
Now the Andersons’ return has completed a circle of destiny begun long ago. Now they must face a deadly drama of unholy ceremony and secret horror, of ancient greed preying upon young life, of unutterable depravity. For, like the other children of Villejeune—children without mercy or tears—sixteen-year-old Kelly Anderson is about to be drawn into a darkness so terrible it spares no life, no soul.
—————
John Saul is “a writer with the touch for raising gooseflesh,” says the Detroit News, and bestseller after bestseller has proved over and over his mastery for storytelling and his genius at creating heart-stopping suspense. Enter his chilling world, and prepare to realize your own hidden fears …
Available wherever Bantam paperbacks are sold!
And now, turn the page
for an exciting preview of John Saul’s
masterpiece of terror, SHADOWS.
They call it The Academy.
Housed in a secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged and picturesque Pacific coast, it is a school for special children. Children gifted—or cursed—with extraordinary minds. Children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own—and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark, ingenious plan is taking form. A hellish experiment meant to probe the ultimate limits of the human brain.
A novel of unrelenting, nerve-jangling suspense, Shadows is John Saul’s most terrifying tale to date … now, here is a chilling glimpse of what awaits you in the …
SHADOWS
John Saul
Amy looked up at the clock on the wall. Only five more minutes until her last class of the day ended.
She wished it would go on for the rest of the afternoon, right up until dinnertime, for every minute that went by brought her one minute closer to the experiment.
“But he said you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Josh had insisted when she’d talked to him an hour ago, during the break between history and math. “What are you so scared of?”
Instead of answering his question, Amy had said nothing at all, for the image in her mind was still the one of the cat in the cage, wired to the computer, being subjected to electrical shocks, frightening sounds, and the stinking odor of the skunk.
Her trepidation hadn’t been eased at all when Mrs. Wilson, her math teacher, had handed her a note at the beginning of the hour, instructing her to appear at the gym at three-thirty.
The note had been signed by Dr. Engersol.
Why did he want her at the gym? Was that where the experiment was going to be held?
“Amy? Amy, are you listening at all?”
The voice of Enid Wilson, the math teacher, punched through the worries that were churning through the little girl’s head. Startled, Amy automatically sat up straight in her chair.
“Haven’t you been listening at all, Amy?” Mrs. Wilson, a tall, angular woman whose gray hair was pulled back into a severe bun pinned at the back of her neck, was glaring at her over